Shopping cart abandonment HELP

Can anyone give me some pointers on how I can decrease shopping cart abandonment on my site?

I currently send e-mails to people that register with my site but do not fininsh the transaction the left.

I offer assistance and a 5% off coupon if they come back.

Any help would be great.

Les
les@spookshop.com
www.spookshop.com

 

What is your completion rate? I think the normal online percentage is between 1 and 2%. If you are getting about that; there is little you can do.

Some things to try are:
Putting your return/refund policies on the order page for easy access. Show them when the order will arrive.

Simplify the form (!!) - is your check out 2 or 3 pages, make it one page instead. That will raise your conversion rate all by itself.

I'd also turn off registration. That's a sales killer. I see no need (as a customer) to make a new account at every random site I shop at.

 

Another thing you could do, aside from turning off the registration, is to not ask for the person's telephone number (if your site does this); or at least make it optional. People will abandon carts, which require registration and telephone number entry. I do not require either at my store.

Also, as with my store, I'm sure your system sends an order confirmation / receipt to the customer. Many customers do not want to give out their e-mail addresses because their afraid of getting junk mail. You should add a blurb to your site stating that an e-mail address is required for the purpose of delivering an order confirmation / receipt for the order, and will not be sold, rented or distributed in any way.

I have found that people are more willing to give their credit card numbers than their e-mail addresses.

Edit: Additionally, I'm not sure it's wise to e-mail the customer, who has signed up, but then abandoned the shopping cart. That is an unsolicited e-mail; and if they are abandoning after deciding they don't want to have to sign up for an account to make a purchase, then they will not be happy to recieve an unsolicited e-mail from you asking them to come back. There is a sense of untrustworthiness in that act, I feel.

I have had this happen to me a few times, and I delete the e-mail, and unsubscribe if I need to, so that I will not receive anything else. I knew I had abandoned the sign-up process, and I didn't feel that I needed to be reminded of it. I had stopped in the middle because I had found cause to during the process, not because of a power outage, or lack of ability to finish what I was doing. I made the choice to stop, and if I want to come back later to finish, I will, but I don't appreciate the e-mails that ask me or remind me to come back and finish what I started.

 

Shigley,

A lot of times the reason for abandonment becomes very clear after you do a form and or path abandonment analysis.

If you find that the majority of people are abandoning at a certain point (page) during the checkout process that's where you should start looking.

Same applies to the form analysis - if people tend to stop filling in the form at a certain field time to take a look at that field and determine if it's needed, or, needed at that point. Sometimes just asking for different info during steps can make a big difference in abandonment.

The best way to reduce abandonment is to thoroughly analyze your data. Your potential customers are telling you why they are leaving, you just need to listen. Data speaks

 

You mean 1 to 2% of visitors typically convert into sales?

Or 1 to 2% of people that click on the buy link actually complete the order?

If you don't provide princing information where it is easy to find, many people may just click on the link just to see the price.

What type of website is it? What are your products? Physical delivery, electronic download?

 

1-% of visitors convert to sales. Once people get an item into the cart, and proceed with checkout that percent should high (say 50% of that 3% who put something in the cart, something like that). But no matter. 1-2% of people who visit buy something on average. If 10% of people are adding items to the cart and you lose them during checkout, that's something easily remedied. Was that confusing or what?

 

There are some usability issues with your site/cart too... here's my quick gloss on some of them... My background is in large ecommerce site usability and design.

- detailed product information is not very detailed, and below the shopping function, down underneath. There is no grouping of the data that is with the product and seperate, related products. Generally, the product page layout should be explored further.
- on your product page, the call to action button "buy" ... they are not "buying" they are "adding to cart". Add a "view cart" link near the "add to cart/buy" button.
- The button itself is fairly small too, and dark red text over black background is difficult to see. Maybe put the product and related information in a light grey box? Something to make it all flow better.
- on your "added to cart/buy" verification pop up... it's a little annoying. Better to take Amazon.com's lead and show a full new page, with the confirmation, then upsell either accessories or other specials.
- If most of your customers are first timers, then default to the registration page, and show a side bar with "log in current customers." There are too many clicks here.
- your cart's Address page is should be organized better. there are 3 visually complex sections, address/name, email, and then account. Look at other sites for best practices here... yours is too visually complex.
- and lastly, run "a vs. b" testing on most of these changes unless you know you have the changes right. Measure baby!

Just my 3 minute analysis... happy to do more if you make it worth my time...

Charlie